A time of violence and uncertainty

Last year, 2023, began violently when three dangerous owner's dogs attacked and killed Belgrade journalist Vladan Radosavljević during an ordinary winter walk on Kosmaj. The dogs had collars with tags on them that had the owner's phone number written on them. In January, Veran Matić wrote for the Cenzolovka portal: "The violent death of Vladan Radosavljević and the great accident that befell his family is a tragedy of our society, state and system that allowed something so gruesome to be possible." As it turns out, this was just such a year.

VIOLENCE

Only in the first nine months of 2023 in Serbia, according to the data of the Autonomous Women's Center, 26 women were killed, but as CINS writes, that number could be significantly higher because there is still no official register of femicides in our country. Although many organizations found that more women were killed this year than before, the competent institutions either did not react or denied these data. Ana Brnabić stated at a session of the National Assembly that the issue of femicide is "used for politicization", as N1 wrote. Other politicians have also tried to relativize femicide. The absurd, shameful statement of the defender of citizens Zoran Pašalić, who during the "Stop femicide" campaign, said that the term femicide is a wrong term will also be remembered: "We should not use the term that men kill women because they are women. They don't kill them for that. That's not why violence is done. But because of disturbed partner, spouse or any other relationships such as many relationships in society between people...".

The third and fourth of May will forever be remembered for the terrible mass murders. In the "Vladislav Ribnikar" elementary school in Belgrade, an armed thirteen-year-old killed a guard and nine students, and wounded five students and a history teacher. A day later, in the villages of Malo Orašje near Smederevo and Dubon near Mladenovac, Uroš B. killed nine people, two of whom were minors. He wounded twelve people. As reported by the media, in the case of the massacre in "Ribnikar", an indictment was brought against the boy's parents, and the prosecution is asking for 12 years in prison for the father, who is in custody, and two and a half years for the mother, because their son, who at the time of the crime had under the age of 14, according to existing laws, cannot be held criminally responsible. The higher public prosecutor's office in Smederevo filed an indictment against Uroš B. for mass murder in places around Mladenovac. He is accused of "committing the criminal offense of aggravated murder, illegal production, possession, carrying and trafficking of weapons and explosive substances and unauthorized use of someone else's vehicle", according to the text of Radio Free Europe.

The unprecedented May tragedies triggered a series of civil protests "Serbia against violence", organized on the streets of Belgrade and throughout Serbia under the slogan "Everything must stop", in which tens of thousands of people participated from May 8 to November 4. propagation of violence in the media, the silence of the institutions regarding it and numerous omissions during the investigation of mass murders in Belgrade demanded the resignations of REM Council members, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, Police Minister Bratislava Gašić, the head of the BIA Aleksandar Vulin and the president Aleksandar Vučić, as well as the shutdown of the reality program and cancellation of the national frequencies of Pink and Happy televisions. None of the requests were met. From the "Serbia against violence" protest in October 2023, a political coalition of the same name was founded, which represents the cooperation of the parties that participated in the organization of the protest, and which signed a coalition agreement in early November before the elections scheduled for December 17.

ELECTIONS

Parliamentary, provincial and local elections were announced on November 1 for December 17, and political parties had only 45 days to campaign, and that in unequal election conditions, given the enormous dominance of SNS in the media and the closure of national television channels for opposition parties. According to experts, the campaign was short, uneven, sharp and dirty. Although Vučić resigned from the post of SNS president at the end of May this year, he was, as expected, the main protagonist of the SNS "Serbia must not stand still" electoral list. By the way, as the opposition politicians discussed in the media, it is a sentence related to the murdered Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić. Vučić explained in the media that the slogan "Serbia must not stop" is a response to the "hypocrisy" of the "Serbia against violence" movement, which was created on the wave of mass protests after the May tragedies under the slogan "Everything must stop".

"Istinomer" calculated that the president spoke as many as 44 times during the 45 days of the campaign, and that in the last 24 hours before the election silence, he had as many as four media appearances. Before the elections in December, BIRODI came out with media monitoring data, according to which Vučić occupied the most space during the campaign on national televisions and TV N1 compared to all other political actors. CRTA announced that the pre-election campaign in Serbia took place in "an atmosphere of systematic abuse of institutions, public functions and the most important media, which put the participants in the upcoming elections in an unequal position." Political scientists assessed that one of the big steps ahead of the elections in December was the fact that a group of opposition parties managed to reach a political agreement and appear together on the "Serbia Against Violence" list. Unlike them, the group of right-wing parties could not form a single column, nor pass the census. The campaign will also be remembered for "ProGlas", an initiative launched by distinguished and professional people, non-partisan public figures, and signed by more than 190.000 people.

In the elections in December, 18 electoral lists were voted for. Vučić declared victory at all levels of the list led by the SNS, while the list "Serbia against violence" is demanding the annulment of the elections in Belgrade, stating that it is about "electoral theft and overturning the electoral will of the citizens". Both domestic and foreign observers reported a large number of irregularities during election day. Representatives of the "Serbia Against Violence" list claim after the election that the government brought in voters from abroad and that, along with buying votes and other forms of pressure, changing voter lists and voter corruption, is enough to cancel the city elections. The day after the election, coalition leaders started protests in the center of Belgrade in front of the building of the Republic Election Commission in Belgrade, demanding that the RIK cancel the Belgrade elections because the SNS victory was the result of "election theft" which they do not recognize. At the same time, Marinika Tepić, one of the list holders of the "Serbia Against Violence" coalition and several MPs are on hunger strike until the demands are met. Demonstrations in front of the RIK are still going on, the police clashed with demonstrators in front of the City Assembly, students started protests and blockades in the city demanding an urgent revision of the voter list.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

ChatGPT had 2023 million monthly active users in early January 100, according to Reuters reports. According to data from November, the number of active users increased to 180 million, and in October alone, this platform was visited by 1,7 billion people. Jeffrey Hinton, the creator of artificial intelligence at Google, left the company in May 2023 and warned the world about the further development of chatbots and artificial intelligence technology. From then until today, the debate about this has occupied a significant space in the world and even domestic media, especially the relationship between technology and journalism as a profession. Questions are raised about the threat to the jobs of journalists and other professions within media production. On the one hand, it has been shown that some artificial intelligence tools can help with certain tasks, such as organizing documents, translating, writing emails, helping with research and writing, language analysis, data cleaning, etc. At the moment, Columbia University research shows that 28 percent of newsrooms in the world already use artificial intelligence in their daily work and reporting, and that artificial intelligence can, in this form and for now, replace only 12 percent of journalistic skills. In our media this year, there is a much more present negative narrative about this topic, primarily from the point of view of the threat of journalism, in texts about the fact that journalists and other media workers will almost certainly lose their jobs, that artificial intelligence is entering every pore of society and that it represents an existential threat for almost every occupation in Serbia.

RAT

On October 80 of this year, the extremist organization Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel, broke through the barbed wire, invaded Israeli territory, Israeli cities, killed civilians and soldiers, and captured hostages. Israel declared war against Hamas, and the Israeli prime minister announced the biggest retaliation against the terror of this militant group. Since then, after 20.000 days of war, around 8.000 people have died, of which 6.000 are children, more than 60 women and XNUMX journalists. This conflict attracted unprecedented attention from the world media, which, reporting on the war, wondered how it was possible that the best-equipped intelligence agency in the Middle East and the world in general failed to be informed and prepared in advance for such an attack. Israel's response to the Gaza Strip has been fierce - almost two million Palestinians have had to leave Gaza since the war began.

At the beginning of 2023, the media discussed whether during this year Russia might get tired after exhausting battles and losses in the war in Ukraine, which has been going on since February 24, 2022. World experts, including well-known historians and political scientists, predicted that at the end of this year, the war could actually be over because neither Russia nor Ukraine can achieve their goals, and both sides would exhaust all resources, weapons, ammunition, and soldiers. However, this was a year of war. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced at the regular annual conference in December that Russia is still sticking to its goals and that the goals of the "special military operation remain unchanged." The "New York Times" announced in August 2023 that since the beginning of the war, there have been close to 70.000 Ukrainian victims. However, neither Ukraine nor Russia have so far released data on their own losses during the war. In mid-December 2023, the European Union opened accession negotiations on Ukraine's membership in the EU. At the same time, as Deutsche Welle writes, the biggest political conflict since the beginning of the Russian invasion is raging in Ukraine, and it is about whether elections should be held in that country in March 2024 or not.

MEDIA LAWS

The new media laws, the Law on Public Information and Media and the Law on Electronic Media were adopted at the session of the National Assembly at the end of October 2023, after months of debate on the problems pointed out by media associations, foundations, journalists and experts. Although the competent Ministry of Telecommunications and Information assessed the adoption of two laws, for the first time since 2014, as an important step in the improvement of the media scene in Serbia, the way in which the public discussion was conducted about them, and the subterfuge of "phantom" members without the knowledge of the working group represent all just not a training ground for the improvement of the already ruined media scene. After a long time, the drafts of the two laws came before the public in the fall of 2023. The deadlines for their adoption were broken several times, the competent ministry changed the proposals several times without agreement with the working group, and after the public discussion ended, it only formulated new articles of the proposed law which were contrary to what was agreed with the media experts. At one point, there was a provision in the draft law that, when awarding money in media contests, data from the Press Council is requested, but only for media that recognize the Council's jurisdiction. This triggered violent reactions from experts, journalist associations, the Coalition for Media Freedom and others who opposed this provision, which would not only set back media ethics, but also confirm that the same rules do not apply to everyone.

During the public discussion, numerous "gong" organizations tried to discredit the Press Council as a self-regulatory body with absurd suggestions that there could be more than one press council. Fortunately, due to pressure from the public, and primarily from the Coalition for Media Freedom, these proposals were dropped from the version of the draft law that went to adoption. However, two completely new wordings were found in the draft Law on Electronic Media, which would harm cable operators, while benefiting broadcasters with a national frequency. During October, some members of the working group warned that such proposals were inserted into the draft law "overnight", pointing out the harmful provision in the draft law according to which the media can be founded by a state-owned company, with the aim of legalizing the role that Telekom as a state-owned the company already has on the media market. At the intervention of the OSCE, as Novi Magazin wrote, "the hasty adoption of the filed legal proposals was stopped, so many hours of combing and reconciliation took place. Or, as some like to say, "compromise". The MPs adopted the proposals of two laws and did not accept that, according to the announcement of the Coalition for Freedom of the Media, delete the articles that allow state-owned enterprises such as Telekom Srbija to have media under their ownership, to introduce provisions that enable judicial and civil control of REM's handling of complaints citizens and organizations and to introduce provisions that limit official campaigns and prescribe the criteria and methodology on the basis of which REM monitors media coverage during election campaigns.